The risks of coal power are dominated by the typical case. People have been living near coal plants for generations, they know what the risks mean in the real life, and they have generally found the risks acceptable.
Nuclear risks are dominated by rare disasters. Because most people have not experienced nuclear disasters near home, they don't know what it would mean in the real life. As the risks are unfamiliar, many people find them scary.
…honestly I'm like 100% sure they don't know what the risks are.
Every time anyone does a study on air pollution it turns out the effects are even more horrible than we already thought it was. Like it gives you dementia and cancer.
On the other hand, people tend to overestimate unfamiliar risks. If you only hear about nuclear disasters (or earthquakes or hurricanes) in the news, it's easy to assume that the risks are more significant than they actually are.
Also right now there is exactly 1 confirmed death from exposure to radiation from Fukushima, and a few dozen cases of cancer, radiation burns and injury. Pretty sure coal kills more directly and indirectly in any given month.
Looks like that 2xxx number is disaster-related deaths? And the related to the nuclear power plant is 1368.
It is a bit confusing what that exactly entails. It seems to include people who committed suicide due to the evacuation, but surely their can't have been 1300 suicides. Is it people who are assumed to have died only because they weren't at home? How do you die due to an evacuation anyways?
None of this really seems explained, unless it really is 1300 suicides.
"As of year 2016" (obsolete), and "according to media analysis" (vague source).
The official number of "Disaster-related deaths" is directly tied to a "disaster condolence fund system" (families have to apply). This is discussed in: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572...
If it was actually possible to build a new nuclear power plant I'm sure the old ones would be replaced. If it wasn't for chernobyl plus three mile island (which released a comically low amount of radiation) maybe the west would have completed its conversion to nuclear instead of essentially pausing all construction for 30 years. But right now the options are essentially shut it down and replace with fossil fuels (wind and solar are not great providers of base loads for obvious reasons) or extend the license.
Base load plus peak load is just one way to run electricity production. There is also load following for instance.
Germany replaced nuclear with renewables while also reducing both coal and fossil fuel use in general: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutsch...
From the OP: >I'm sure the old ones would be replaced.
I think their point is that the old ones are still in use (sometimes extending their life rather than replacing them with better designs) because new ones aren't allowed to be built.
It's like banning new ICE designs and then complaining about how ICE aren't more efficient.
The answer unfortunately is no, the fear mongering largely won out.
And you also seem to have forgotten the thread your in with your last statement.
Only one person died from radiation from the Fukushima accident, a tiny fraction of the total deaths from the tsunami. It's an insignificant risk compared to other forms of energy.
It was the most bizarre, horrifyingly dump, idiotic, horrible management I can imagine.
The safety systems were rising warnings, the person that decided to ignore them and ordered continuation of the test wasn't even on site!
How many people died? How many people did annually from people burning coal?How many people develop long term health effects from coal?
How many catastrophic failures of nuclear reactors have there been? What about catastrophic failures of other energy sources?
Think critically mate.
Uranium is very energy-dense (https://xkcd.com/1162/), you don't need to mine a lot of it to get a lot of energy out. So to produce the same amount of energy, there will be far fewer deaths from uranium mining compared to coal mining, or oil drilling, or even (IIRC) rare earth mining to make solar panels.
> How much preventative measures have been and are still being taken throughout Europe because of Chernobyl and how much damage did that do?
Many preventative measures are reasonable and necessary! This isn't incompatible with nuclear being safe. For example, flying is the safest form of travel, in part because there is strong safety regulation around airplanes. (That being said, a lot of the regulation around nuclear is excessive and counterproductive)
> Why do nuclear proponents only compare with coal, never with renewables?
The biggest problem with solar and wind is that they are intermittent, so alone they can't support a reliable grid. There are some other issues too (solar takes up a lot of land area, wind turbines kill millions of birds). But all technologies have their tradeoffs; I will support renewables where they make sense, as a component of a reliable grid alongside nuclear.
Geothermal is something that doesn't gen enough attention IMO. Currently, it is only viable in a few locations, but potentially with some more R&D it could become a lot more important.
Living in the same city where of nuclear power plant is considered not inhabitable?
Or were you making a terrible joke about a nuclear accident?
"...asked whether respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement "I would be comfortable living close to a nuclear power plant", only 28% agreed and 60% disagreed." [1]
The part about it being due to uninhabitable cities (referring to Chernobyl, Pripyat and Fukushima) was conjecture - I don't know people's reasons for it.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/18/austr...
Also, my opinion of Australians is slightly shifted after reading that information, but who knows how they crafted that survey. Did they compare it to living next to a coal-fired plant? I am not able to easily find the survey methodology.
Anyhow,the science is abundantly clear that there is no reason to fear living near a nuclear power plant.
"In our study, living near an NPP was not associated with any significant risk of hematologic malignancies, except for CLL/SLL, for which risk was significantly reduced."(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.31116)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26638017/
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-risks...
The anti-nuclear environmentalists have no good to balance out their harm.
Renewables can be constructed faster and cheaper than nuclear and are the clear winner of the future.
There exist several answers that have to be combined:
Using biogas to load-follow. Currently biogas produces around 8% of electricity but mostly as base-load.
Directing the use of electricity. This was already done to deal with nuclear‘s similar issue by offering cheaper prices in the night. With smart meters we can offer hourly based billing.
Batteries for intra-day storage is already getting deployed as it’s already economical and we will see much more in the future.
For seasonal low-points we will probably first continue to use gas but in a much smaller quantity if the other points also get deployed. At some point hydrogen will make sense.
In all seriousness, nuclear power plants are also very controllable within a certain bound, you just can't turn them completely off or else they take a long time to turn back on. Control of power output is what reactor control rods are for. Coal power is similar - you can control the temperature of the boiler but you can't stop the turbine completely if you want to turn it back on any time soon.
Nuclear power is the most reliable and consistent energy source in the world. It's not even close! If you are going to spew garage, please cite it. This isn't reddit.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the average capacity factor (which measures the actual electricity output of a power plant compared to its maximum potential output) for nuclear power plants around the world was 81% in 2019.
This is higher than most other types of power plants, including coal-fired power plants (which had an average capacity factor of 53% in 2019) and natural gas-fired power plants (which had an average capacity factor of 46% in 2019).
The reason why there were "massive shutdowns" was because they didn't do maintenance during COVID as well as noticed abnormal corrosion.
Regarding uptime, heres some data.
Nuclear Reactor Up Time.
User What is the average up time of a nuclear reactor in France?
ChatGPT As of my knowledge cutoff date of September 2021, the average up time of a nuclear reactor in France was about 75%, according to data from the French electricity company EDF. This means that, on average, the reactors were operational and producing electricity for about 75% of the time. However, it's important to note that this figure can vary from year to year and from reactor to reactor, depending on factors such as maintenance schedules, unexpected shutdowns, and other issues
User Can you cite your sources for uptime of nuclear power in France? chatGPT Sure, here are some sources for the uptime of nuclear power in France:
According to the French electricity company EDF, the average availability rate for its nuclear fleet in 2020 was 75.9%. Source: https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/edf-in-france/the-nuclea...
The World Nuclear Association also reports an average capacity factor (uptime) for nuclear power plants in France of 73.3% in 2019. Source: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
The French government's Ministry of Ecological Transition provides a quarterly report on the performance of the country's electricity generation sources, including nuclear power. The latest report, covering Q4 2020, states that the availability rate for the nuclear fleet during that period was 71.2%. Source: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/Performance...
Sources for other statements. https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220825-france-prolongs-...
https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-...
Nuclear reactors are pretty bad at it, but if you have a lot of nuclear reactors like France does you have to do it anyway, which is why France has a lower capacity factor for nuclear than other countries.
For fossil-fuel- and biogas-driven plants a low capacity factor usually isn’t a big problem as fuel costs dominate. For nuclear fixed costs mostly dominate which means that a low capacity factor also means much higher costs.
If your objective is to eliminate carbon emissions, this won't do that. I'm not a purist though, if a small amount of natural gas or biogas needs to be burned at peak load that's not a huge deal.
> Batteries for intra-day storage
What do you do when cloudy + no wind lasts for much more than a day (as can happen in winter)?
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutsch...
The narrative that somehow environmentalist managed to pass this bill against the will of conservatives and social democrats is a nice Dolchstosslegende